Kill an alien, lose a file from your computer...

http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/

This is a fascinating idea! A little scrolling game where you shoot aliens.

Every time you kill an alien, the game randomly deletes a file from your hard drive.

If you touch an alien, you die and the application is deleted.

Anyone want to try it out? :smiley:

They stole this idea from Software Dynamics’s (of After Dark fame) 1994 title Operation: Inner Space.

I’m pretty sure we did a thread on this game in the past month.

Yeh, this one is old news by now. :wink:

Note that there are no plans for a sequel. There’s an interesting interview with the creator, here.

Ah, darn. And here I thought I had found something new and exciting!

My grandpa still has that game on his old Pentium 75 Mhz,

I’m…confused by this game. I realize it’s supposed to be “art”, but still, I have a hard time thinking anything other than “lame”.

It’s nothing compared to the Doom task manager.

It’s a game that attaches real consequences to your actions.

It’s a game that could theoretically lead you to question -why- you are actually killing all those aliens.

It’s a game that looks much more entertaining when your only gaming platform is a macintosh. :wink:

It’s also a game that every sixteen year old who’s learning to program has thought of but have enough good sense to discard.

There are already games that have real consequences to your actions. We call it “gambling”.

Carpal tunnel, obesity, lack of personal hygiene, loss of perception of time, Cheeto-fingers.

These are all well-established real-world consequences of gaming.

Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I sure didn’t think of it when I was 16 and programming.

Gambling isn’t really comparable though, since it’s not really a ‘simulation’ sort of game.

Plus, only idiots eat cheetos while trying to game. Ruin your mouse that way. :wink:

What a coincidence, only idiots would play this moron’s game.

Will it delete its own file? Or at least try to?

Beats me. I assume it’s possible, but with the number of files on an average PC, the odds of you actually getting that particular one is pretty small.

IIRC, it deletes its own file when the game is over.